“eHealth interoperability is improving, but it remains a challenge,", says Karima Bourquard, Technical Coordinator of the Antilope project and Director of Interoperability at IHE Europe. "We have found that policymakers and decision makers in the Member States and regions often do not realise the benefits of consistent technical and semantic standards and profiles."

Bourquard: "We hope that our work gives the community the information and tools to steer us towards a more aligned, integrated and, yes, interoperable future."

The experts who were present at the Antilope handover workshop on 29 January 2015 at the University Hospital in Ghent came to an agreement on the required next steps to take Antilope forward:

• On political level: The eHealth Network (eHN) should take note of the Antilope results because it offers interoperability tools for countries wanting to deploy harmonised interoperability. The eHN should also make a proposal to the Connecting Europe Facility to standardise cross-border medical exchanges based on the Antilope results.

• On operational level: Provide contribution and support to the national/regional level for adoption of the Antilope Framework; Define an implementation policy driven governance: Cross-European Collaboration platform on eHealth interoperability.

You can find the documents and presentations from the handover workshop here.

The Antilope project experts have now handed over their work to policy makers and projects such as EXPAND: "Antilope ends on 31 January 2015, but the journey towards eHealth interoperability goes on. We invite everybody to take our documents and put them to good use. We wish you good luck: your success is our success."

More info on the Antilope website.

Previous news items on Antilope:

• EU interoperability and eHealth: Antilope final conference
• Antilope project calls for development of eHealth testing tools
• EU project gives guidance to further eHealth interoperability in Europe